Contents

A Player Owned Starbase (or POS for short) is a player-controlled structure that can be anchored at moons in 0.3 security systems and below or if you or your corp has 7.0 or more standings with that faction that you are going to anchor your pos

There are many stuctures available to help you to build and customise a POS. You can buy the structures on the market, transfer them to your POS via a hauler and set them up. Each structure has a specific purpose and plays an important part of your base's operation and enhances its capabilities. Structures must be anchored at your POS and brought online via your Control Tower before they are operational.

The Control Tower (or CT for short) is the hub of any POS -- nothing can operate unless the Control Tower is online. The CT is used to anchor structures around it and manage their operation. The CT also governs the rules of how your POS defends itself against other corporations and determines who is allowed within its shields

Control Towers have a limited supply of power and CPU. Each POS structure uses a certain amount of powergrid and cpu which is deducted from your CT's total

Control towers also come in three different sizes: large, medium, and small. Large control towers have the most shields, grid, and CPU capacity but use the most fuel. Medium control towers use 1/2 of the fuel that the large towers do but have correspondingly less shields, grid and cpu. Likewise, small control towers use 1/4 the fuel of a normal but again has even less shield, grid and cpu.

You will need to decide what size control tower best suits your needs. If you are an NPC hunting corp who rarely visit 0.0 but would like to operate out of there occasionally, then a small Control Tower is good for you. If you are a PVP corp that needs an outpost to safespot, reload, change ship or generally operate out of, then a Medium may be better for you. If you are an industrial corp that is into heavy 0.0 mining or moon mining then a large CT would be best for you.

When a Control Tower is online, it emits a force field around it as a shield. If a player is not in your corporation or does not have a password then they cannot enter the shield. The shield appears as a large blue sphere which completely surrounds the Tower. The strength of the shield is dependent on the Control Tower's race and size.

For a normal (large) Control tower this can be anything up to 50 million hitpoints, which as you can imagine, will take nothing less than hundreds of battleships pounding it for hours to take it down. When the shields are completely gone the POS will enter Reinforced Mode. This is a mode where the POS consumes fuel at a very high rate to withstand damage. Reinforced mode is automatic but will only happen if you have Strontium clathrates (ice product) in your fuel storage.

As stated earlier, the Control Tower is used to manage all other structures - this includes turrets and launchers you anchor to protect your base. The Control Tower can be set to fire on anyone based on standings, their standings to your corporation or whether they fire on you or the POS. There are also options to set a password so friendlies can pass through your shields and have safety within its field. Enemies cannot target you if you are within the shields of your POS. They can only target the Control Tower itself.

Anchoring takes time, bear that in mind if in a potentially hostile system.

Once you have anchored your tower, you should set a password for it for access. You will also need to enter that POS password on your ship. The password option is mainly used to allow non-corp/alliance members to pass through the shield.

Note: You have two tick box options, allow corp members and allow alliance members. This will allow both to pass freely through the shield without the need for a password.

A Control Tower runs on fuel. The fuels needed to keep a Control Tower online are trade goods and ice products. Your Control Tower has limited space for you to place these fuels in. The fuel units are consumed every hour (Medium CT: every 2 hours, Small CT: every 4 hours).

Drag and drop the Isotopes, Heavy Water, Liquid Ozone, and Strontium Clathrate you purchased Along with the other necessary robotics, collant, enriched uranium, coolant and Oxygen.

POS's do not refuel themselves, they only take whats available inside the resource storage part of the of the CT. If a specific fuel like Liquid Ozone has run out, then your structures will start to go offline. Don't just shove tones of fuel in there, balance it out so everything has roughly the same amount of days supply.

If you run out of Isotopes, your whole Control Tower will go offline, shields will drop and you will be a sitting duck. This is precisely the reason why fuel is such a critical issue and should be the most important thing to take into consideration when planning your base. Ask yourself if your corp can mine/buy the required fuel regularly, how many members can have mining barges? Do you have easy access to ice belts?

Always mine in advance, have 1 months supply stored in your Corporate Hanger Array at the POS. If you mine on the spur of the moment whenever you need fuel you will fall behind and risk putting your base at risk to open attack.

Refining Arrays (better known as Mobile Refineries) allow you to reprocess ore at at a POS. You load the Refinery with the ore (only one ore type is allowed in the refinery at a time). Once loaded you right click the Refinery and start the process. Unlike stations, the process is not immediate. You have to wait between 1 and 3 hours before the contents of the Refinery are changed into minerals.

The Corporation hanger allows you to store anything you want. When opened, the layout and naming of the hangers is exactly the same as your corporation office or HQ hangers. Although limited in space, there is more than enough to store ore, mods and loot.

The Ship Maintainence Array structure allows you to store ships inside it. When you store your ship inside it, it ejects you outside in your pod. You are safe because you are still within the shield of your POS and cannot be targeted.

The Array also allows you to change your modules in space. To do this, move within 3000m of the Array, ensure no other ships are near. Have the modules you wish to change already in your cargo hold. Simply drag the module out from your low/mid/hi slot panels into your cargo bay and drag the modules you do want from your cargo hold into the slots. Online the modules and you're all set!

The process of refiiting an entire ship can take a while as you need at least 95% cap to online a module. Many corps keep a cruiser or battleship specially fitted with energy transfer modules to help boost the fitting ship's cap so it can online modules more quickly. You will need to go outside your POS shield bubble to target the other ship for an energy transfer.

Moon Harvesting Arrays are structures for moon mining. When set up correctly, they will extract raw materials from the moon your POS is anchored at. Depending on your configuration, the Harvester Array will pass the materials onto a Reactor Array for reaction or will store them in a Silo.

Silos are used to store Raw Materials, Processed materials, Advanced Materials or Minerals. A Silo can only hold one type of material inside it at a time and must be put offline to change type or to empty it.

Coupling Arrays act as an intermediary holding pipe between two structures. Take for instance the Moon Harvesting Array and Silo. If you want to empty your silo you have to offline it, this may cost you to lose a cycle of raw materials. By placing a Coupling Array between the Harvester and Silo, you can safely offline the Silo while you empty it and any Raw Materials that arrive will temporarily be stored in the Coupler Array.

The Coupler Array is also useful for when the Harvesters and a reactor are running/processing at different speeds; i.e. two Harvesters may produce 100 units each per hour. The Reactor may only be able to process the said units every 2 hours. This leaves you with a 100 surplus which will be lost in the process. A Coupling Array acts as a buffer to temporarily hold the surplus materials until the Reactor is free.

You can have Warp Scrambler, Warp Disruptor, Sensor Dampening, Stasis Webifing and ECM batteries anchored at your POS. They work automatically in conjunction with your Control Towers security settings.

The difference between a dangerous POS and a lethal one is all in its ability to spank anyone that comes close. POS weaponry is very very mean and go right up to the extra-large size. Projectile Turret batteries for instance have a 85x damage modifier and can hit up to 400km on a Minmatar Tower. Small POS turrets take medium ammunition. Medium POS turrets take large ammunition. Large POS turrets take extra-large ammo which will require you to buy a blueprint for.

Turret batteries have limited cargo space for you to put ammo into. You may mix ammo type but not ammo size. Lasers are a little different, the focusing crystals degrade with use and must eventually be replaced.

You need the anchoring skill to be able to anchor different POS structures, you will also need the Starbase role from your corporation to manage the control tower operate structures like the Refinery and Ship Maintainence Array.